Posts Tagged ‘Terrorism’

Israel’s fighter jets have taken part in the Thursday Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen, sources in Sanaa disclosed on Friday

“This is for the first time that the Zionists are conducting a joint operation in coalition with Arabs,” Secretary General of Yemen’s Al-Haq Political Party Hassan Zayd wrote on his facebook page.

He noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had issued direct orders for the Israeli air force to send fighter jets to the Saudi-led air raid on Yemen.

Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes against Yemen and killed, at least, 25 civilians early Thursday, one day after the US-backed Yemeni president fled the country.

Also, 15 more people were killed and injured in a second round of massive attacks by the Saudi Arabian fighter jets in the Northwestern Yemeni city of Sa’ada on Friday.

Yemen’s al-Massira TV reported that the Saudi air force targeted the Yemeni’s civilians who were shopping in a market.

Five Persian Gulf States — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait — backed by the US have declared war on Yemen in a joint statement issued earlier Thursday.

US President Barack Obama authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to the military operations, National Security Council Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said late Wednesday night.

She added that while US forces were not taking direct military action in Yemen, Washington was establishing a Joint Planning Cell with Saudi Arabia to coordinate US military and intelligence support.

Riyadh claimed that it has bombed the positions of the Ansarullah fighters and launched attacks against the Sana’a airport and the Dulaimi airbase.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is attacking Ansarullah positions, Saudi warplanes have flattened a number of homes near Sana’a international airport. Based on early reports, the Saudi airstrikes on Yemen have so far claimed the lives of 25 civilians with more deaths feared, Yemeni sources said.

The Saudi aggression has received growing international condemnation as it is pushing the region and the world into an unprecedented fast-growing war as its ISIL mercenaries are on the brink of complete annihilation in Iraq and Syria.

Security and medical officials say at least eight children have been injured when a cluster bomb dropped during Israel’s military aggression against Lebanon in the summer of 2006 detonated in the country’s south.

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the blast took place in the southern Lebanese border village of Zebqin, situated near the city of Tyre and over 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the capital, Beirut, on Friday evening, and wounded eight kids, aged between six and eight years old.

“We were having a picnic next to a river in Zebqin and on the way back, my friend stepped on a device that exploded, and we were all hit,” six-year-old Hussein Bazzi said.

“One child was wounded in the head and is in a critical condition in the operating room,” an employee at Tyre’s Lebanese-Italian Hospital, where the children were taken, said.

According to the United Nations, the Israeli army dropped some four million cluster bombs on Lebanon during the July-August 2006 war, mostly during the last 48 hours of the conflict.

More than 400 people, 90 percent of them civilians and a third under the age of 18, have been killed by the munitions, while dozens more have been maimed.

Southern Lebanon is littered with hundreds of unexploded Israeli cluster bombs, and the Lebanese army together with the UN and other international organizations are working to purge the area of the deadly ordnance.

Cluster bombs are a type of explosive weapons that blow up in the air and scatter dozens of sub-munitions over a large area.

Cluster munitions are banned in most countries due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapons. The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which entered into force in 2010, has 114 members. Israel has not joined the treaty.

An elderly Palestinian walks past a building, which was damaged during last summer’s Israeli war against Gaza Strip, in the Shejaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City on February 23, 2015

A nongovernmental federation for human rights organizations says Israel perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity during its devastating military onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip last summer.

In a report entitled “Trapped and Punished: The Gaza Civilian Population under Operation Protective Edge” published on Friday, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) pointed to examples of indiscriminate and direct attacks against civilians and civilian objects, disproportionate use of force as well as deliberate attacks targeting medical services during the Israeli war on Gaza.

The report further made a reference to Israel’s “refusal of access to humanitarian relief, the targeting of residential areas, operational healthcare facilities and transport, and life-sustaining civilian infrastructure” among the regime’s violations of international law.

“Most of people we met with, all of whom have lived through previous attacks on Gaza, told us that the summer offensive in 2014 was the worst they had seen. Bombs fell entirely indiscriminately, on men, women and children alike,” said Gaelle Dusepulchre, one of the members of the FIDH delegation that recently visited the Gaza strip.

The Paris-based FIDH has presented the report to the International Criminal Court (ICC), where the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority is planning to lodge its first case aginst the Tel Aviv regime’s crimes.

A Palestinian boy and his sister walk in front of a building, which was damaged during last summer’s Israeli war against the Gaza Strip, in the Shejaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City on February 23, 2015

“It’s now time for ICC to move from a mere preliminary examination of the conflict to a full investigation. The Prosecutor must go to the field in order to appreciate the magnitude of the crimes committed,” said Shawan Jabbarin, the FIDH vice president, adding, “Palestinian have been waiting for justice for far too long.”

Israel started its latest war on the Gaza Strip in early July last year. The offensive ended on August 26, 2014, with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed in Israel’s 50-day onslaught. Over 11,100 others – including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people – were also injured.

Clashes took place, on Thursday evening, near the western entrance of Kufur ed-Deek village, in the central West Bank city of Salfit, after Israeli soldiers and extremist settlers tried to invade it; while the soldiers also kidnapped two Palestinians.

Media sources in Salfit said a large number of Israeli fanatics from two illegal nearby colonies gathered near the village, and attempted to invade it.

Dozens of residents noticed the settlers gathered in the area in an attempt to prevent the extremists from invading their village, leading to clashes with Israeli soldiers who arrived at the scene.

The villagers are subject to frequent assaults by fanatic Israeli groups, and Israeli soldiers, including ongoing attacks against their orchards and farmlands, especially amidst attempts to expand illegal nearby colonies, built on Palestinian lands.

The decision, Israeli PM office said, was ‘based on consideration of Israeli interests at this time.’

Israeli occupation stopped the monthly transfer of $130 million of tax and customs duties that it collects on behalf of the PA in January after a Palestinian application to join the ICC

Days of Palestine, Jerusalem –Israeli occupation authorities said on Friday it would release millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenues to Palestinian Authority (PA).

“The tax revenues that accrued up until February will be transferred, offset by payments for services rendered to the Palestinian population, such as electricity, water and hospitalisation,” said Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

The decision, it said, was “based on humanitarian concerns and in overall consideration of Israeli interests at this time.”

The move comes three months after freezing the payments in protest at unilateral Palestinian moves towards statehood.

Israeli occupation stopped the monthly transfer of $130 million of tax and customs duties that it collects on behalf of the PA in January after a Palestinian application to join the ICC.

Since then, more than $500 million has been withheld, prompting the PA to cut most of its employees’ salaries by 40 percent and resort to an emergency budget.

With the deficit already at around 15 percent of GDP and the tax transfers accounting for two-thirds of income, the budget is falling into a deeper hole every month.

GAZA (Ma’an) — Three Palestinians suffered excessive tear gas inhalation after Israeli forces fired tear-gas canisters at a group of Palestinians east of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, medics said.

Israeli forces also opened fire on agricultural lands east of Khan Yunis and east of Rafah, witnesses said.

Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on Palestinian civilians near the border since the ceasefire agreement signed Aug. 26, 2014, that ended a more than 50-day assault on Gaza, termed by Israel Operation Protective Edge, that left around 2,200 dead and 11,000 injured.

In February alone, there were a total of 26 incidents of shootings, incursions into the Strip, and arrests, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

The attacks come despite Israeli promises at the end of the ceasefire that restrictions on Palestinian access to the border region near the “security buffer zone” would be eased.